Javier Batiz, the great Mexican rock-and-roll guitarist, played and sang last week in a concert that embodied and gave voice to everything that is most wonderful about Tijuana and the U.S.-Mexico border region. Batiz, who since he was thirteen has played in the bars and nightclubs of Tijuana, performed this time with the Baja California […]
Geography Archives: Latin America
Washington Plans Further Actions against Venezuela
The US government has been increasing aggressive actions against the Chavez administration in an attempt to isolate the major petroleum-producing nation and aid in ousting the Venezuelan President. During a hearing last Friday, June 24, in the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives regarding “Sanctionable Activities in Venezuela,” Democrats and Republicans requested the […]
The Greek Crisis: Uttering the Other “D Word”
Default is not the dirty word that nobody wants to say. Almost everybody now accepts that Greece will default. Several people will prefer to use the euphemism of “re-profiling debts,” but we all know what it means. The interesting thing is that at least some authors, like Martin Wolf in a recent Financial Times […]
Iran: Subsidy Reform, “Stagflation,” and the Need for Industrial Policy
Iran’s biggest economic problem is the growing production slump at its factories and workshops. For both workers and the business elite, Iran’s domestic industrial troubles are far more pressing — and generating far more public anxiety — than international sanctions. The biggest danger for Iran in 2011 is the combination of higher unemployment and inflation […]
Why Is the United States Waging Perpetual War against the Cuban People’s Health System?
In January the government of the United States of America saw fit to seize $4.207 million in funds allocated to Cuba by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011, Cuba has charged. The UN Fund is a $22 billion a year program that works to […]
Foreign Banks or Foreign Capital?
One less emphasised lesson from the global financial crisis was that developing countries that are successful in attracting foreign financial investors take a hit when such a crisis occurs because of a reverse flow of capital. Foreign financial firms needing to cover losses or meet commitments at home withdraw their capital, generating a credit crunch […]
Why Washington Is Worried about Peru’s Election
In just a few days, on June 5th, an election will take place that will have a significant influence on the Western Hemisphere. At the moment it is too close to call. Most of official Washington has been relatively quiet, but there is no doubt that the Obama Administration has a big stake in the […]
Zelaya’s Return to Honduras: A Step Forward, But Will Political Repression Continue?
Former Honduran President Zelaya’s return home today has important implications for the Western Hemisphere that, we can predict, will be widely overlooked. Zelaya was ousted from the presidency when he was kidnapped at gunpoint by the military on June 28, 2009. Although no hard evidence has yet emerged that the U.S. government was directly involved […]
Awaiting the Arrival of Manuel Zelaya
Compañero Manuel Zelaya: we are back in the place where we last met. Your return to Honduras is only the first step for which we took to the streets. In Honduras we still await justice and punishment for those responsible for the coup d’état and for the violations of human rights. All of Latin […]
Michal Kalecki and the Economics of Development
In the long and impressive catalogue of Michal Kalecki’s contributions to economics, the proportion of writings devoted to what is now called “development economics” is relatively small. And most of his work in this area is concise to the point of being terse, in short articles that simply state some crucial principles, typically without much […]
El Salvadoran Government and Social Movements Say No to Monsanto
On the morning of Friday, May 6th, President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador’s left-wing FMLN party arrived at the La Maroma agricultural cooperative in the department of Usulután for a potentially historic meeting with hundreds of small family farmers. Usulután has often been referred to as the country’s breadbasket for its fertile soil and capacity […]
Bolivarian Leader Stands in Solidarity with Syrian People against Imperial Onslaught
The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela communicated by telephone with his brother, the President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar al-Assad, in order to convey to him a personal greeting full of affection and hope at a moment when the imperialist forces are unleashing violence against the Syrian people. President Hugo Chávez received […]
Obama at AIPAC: What the Decline of American Power Means for Israel
President Obama’s speech to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on Sunday predictably offered lots of “red meat” for pro-Israel constituencies. But, in heavily veiled language, the President also made an enormously important point about the evolving character of international relations in the 21st century and what that means for the United […]
Notes from the Liberation Without Borders Tour in Tunisia
13 May 2011 Tonight, the transnational delegation from the Knowledge Liberation Front (KLF) reunited in Tunis to begin the Liberation Without Borders Tour. This delegation is a project of activist research that was initiated at a meeting in Paris last February. It aims to reinforce the relations with the Tunisian movement activists that were forged […]
The Ecological Rift: A Radical Response to Capitalism’s War on the Planet
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. Monthly Review Press, 2010. 544 pages. Climate change is often called the greatest environment threat facing humanity. The threat is very real. Unless we cut carbon pollution fast, runaway climate change will worsen existing environmental and social problems, and […]
Obstruct Militarization and the Usurpation of Democracy
On behalf of the American University Anthropology department, I am deeply honored to welcome you all to AU, and to the Latin American Solidarity Coalition’s “Conference to Build a Stronger Movement to End US Militarism and the Militarization of Latin America.” It’s exciting personally to be involved in such an important event — after all, […]
The Scorecard on Development, 1960-2010: Closing the Gap?
Executive Summary: This paper is the third installment in a series (the first and second editions were in 2001 and 2005) that traces a long-term growth failure in most of the world’s countries. For the vast majority of the world’s low- and middle-income countries, there was a sharp slowdown in economic growth for the two […]
Honduras: Protesters Challenge IDB-funded Privatization of Education, despite Massive Violent Repression
March 2011 was marked by the worst repression seen against the people of Honduras since the June 2009 military coup. The repression came in response to massive protests against an all-out final push by the Pepe Lobo regime to essentially privatize Honduras’ public education system while destroying teachers’ independence, politicizing schools, slashing salaries in half, […]
Ecuador’s Expulsion of U.S. Ambassador
A declaration by the Ecuadorian government that U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges is “persona non grata” and must leave Ecuador as soon as possible should not come as a surprise, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said. Weisbrot noted that the expulsion follows recent troubling revelations in cables released by Wikileaks […]
Al-Jazeera: An Island of Pro-Empire Intrigue
The Empire admits: without Al-Jazeera, they could not have bombed Libya. How did Al-Jazeera, once dubbed the ‘terror network’ by some and whose staff were martyred by US bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, end up becoming the media war propagandist for yet another Western war against a small state of the Global South, Libya? We […]
